- Australian/British coverage (commentators: Barry Davies) - only presentation marks shown here. [from U.S. Skating magazine] The most heated controversy of the meeting concerned what constitutes authentic ice dancing within the regulations.
The French couple, Isabelle and Paul Duchesnay, who took the bronze, presented the most entertaining performance of the whole week. Many spectators and televiewers thought they deserved to win. Their dramatic rendition of a "kiss of death" war dance was a theatrical masterpiece, tailor-made for an ice revue, but was it technically approved ice dancing? The Polish judge obviously thought not, marking them ten decimal points lower than her eight colleagues, resulting in an animated discussion with the referee which considerably delayed the start of the next skaters.
The performance by the French and, to a lesser extent, that of the winners, were not wholly correct ice dancing as defined in the ISU manual. The nine technical experts might as well have been nine impresarios assessing audience reaction. Because the judges did not enforce the rules as they stand, many competitors who complied more correctly inevitably suffered. The veteran Soviet World champions, Natalia Bestemianova, twenty-eight, and Andrei Bukin, thirty, featuring a classical balletic interpretation of Borodin music, won their fourth successive European title and their fifth in six years, having first won in 1983 when Britain's Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean were unable to compete because Torvill had injured a shoulder. - Наталья Бестемьянова, Андрей Букин -------------------- #figureskating #フィギュアスケート #eiskunstlauf #фигурноекатание #pattinaggioartistico #patinageartistique #icedance special thanks to Kim!
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